You’re Invited: “A Passport to the Nations” Multi-Cultural Festival – Friday, May 14th, 7:30 – 9:00 PM

Hope Fellowship Church will host its 3rd Annual “A Passport to the Nations” Multi-Cultural Festival on Friday, May 14th at 7:30 PM at the church facility. We invite you to join us as we celebrate the cultural diversity of our Lord’s creation. The evening will consist of food, art & clothing exhibits from around the world. There will also be cultural performances and demonstrations representing the beauty of the nations.

This event is free and open to the community.

Hope Fellowship Church is located at 16 Beech Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 (near the Porter Square T-Stop on the Redline).

For more information about this festival, please contact Odoi Odotei (odoi@hopefellowshipchurch.org) or visit www.hopefellowshipchurch.org.

We look forward to seeing you next Friday!

Themes of women’s rights, social justice, and the Indian caste system are featured in a new opera by Cambridge-based composer Shirish Korde. Please read on for more information.

Boston Musica Viva
Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen
a multi-media chamber opera by Shirish Korde
April 23 & 24, 2010, 8pm
Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center

Contemporary music ensemble Boston Musica Viva and Music Director Richard Pittman present the world premiere of a ground-breaking new chamber opera, Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen, by Cambridge-based composer Shirish Korde. Performances take place at 8 pm on Friday and Saturday, April 23 and 24, 2010, at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. Tickets are $15-$30 and are available at www.bmv.org.

The multi-media chamber opera Phoolan Devi: The Bandit Queen is based on true events. This compelling story focuses on the life of Phoolan Devi, who was born into poverty, sold as a child bride, abducted by bandits, abused and victimized, imprisoned, and finally elected to India’s Parliament. Just as she was assuming national recognition as a crusader for the poor, she was assassinated in 2001 at the age of 37.

Korde’s contemporary score is a powerful synthesis of Asian and Western musical traditions. Drawing on the musical styles of India such as Vedic chant, Qawwali, Bollywood, and tabla drumming, as well as contemporary Western music, the composer unifies many diverse genres into a seamless lyrical score. An international cast of musicians, dancers, and singers will join Boston Musica Viva, including Zorana Sadiq and Elizabeth Keusch, sopranos; Brian Church, baritone; Aditya Kalyanpur, tabla; Chirag Katty, sitar; and dancers Prachi Dalal, Mesma S. Belsare, and I Made Bandem.

Sunday was one of those days. You know the kind that just crawls by, and no matter what you do, you can’t make it go any faster? I got to work just before Noon. I had been up since Nine AM, had two cups of coffee and was working on a third in the store. I had ridden my bike four miles to work, and it was a little chilly. You would think that I would be wide awake and perky. But now, within five minutes of hanging the “Open” sign on the door, I was yawning and ready to go home.

Business was good. By 2:30, we had met our sales goal for the day and customers were still streaming in. Regardless, I didn’t want to interact with any of them.
“Can I help you?”
“No, I’m just looking.”
“Ok, great. Let me know if you have any questions.”
Back to the counter to continue doing inventory and trying at least have an engaging look on my face.

Then, just as I was about to curl up in the fetal position on the floor behind the cash register to take a nap, Bill comes up to the counter with our new Salt Crystal Lamp from Pakistan. He’s happy to have found such a piece. After all, it has a natural pink hue that will go well with the Italian conch shell that sits on the other side of his room. It also has a natural salt formation on one side, that serves as clear evidence that this is not an “all natural” piece that, under careful scrutiny, proves to be plastic.

Bill and I got to talking. It turned out that he used to be a correspondent with CBS and a number of smaller, independent European news networks. He covered just about every civil war in Eastern Europe and Latin America during the 80s and 90s, but his most memorable experience was radio documentary work. Most of these documentaries focused on how the customs and traditions of indigenous people groups were being affected by the increasing reality of globalization.

He mentioned, for example, how the installation of natural gas pipelines in Eastern Europe disrupt the migration patterns of reindeer – and the nomadic people who herd them. Or, how Guatemalan men now leave their villages to work in cities, since local agrarian employment is dying off in the face of large, corporate-controlled farms. Not to mention the fact that Native Alaskans, tempted by the allure of the city, wind up leaving their villages and moving to Anchorage, where they learn English and stop speaking their native tongue – and stop telling their oral histories to their children.

All of these groups remind me of the Biblical character David facing Goliath. Faced with the choice of trusting in God’s power for miraculous deliverance, or becoming a slave to the encroaching Philistine Empire, David chose the right path. In a world that is much more globalized than David’s was, our neighbors face difficult choices. With little mouths to feed and often on the verge of survival or death – and rarely prosperity – do they vie for a better, harder way with the faith that God will deliver them, or, in the face of such a giant struggle, do they pack up, leave their children, and migrate – in order to survive and protect the very families they may leave behind?

We in the church often forget that we, too, are like David: faced with busy lives and an overwhelming sense that the structures we interact with are immense and immovable, we can say a prayer of faith and then throw our own stones at Goliath to support our fellow men and women across the world: buy Fair Trade. Pray for the people making our stuff and corporate executives who employ them. Grow some of our food. Pray for the farm workers and agribusiness executives. Walk or bike to work. Pray for people in Nigeria and Alaska affected by energy policies. And never lose sight of the fact that David’s trust was in the Lord, not his own hand, or even the stone itself.

Ben Cressy lives in Uphams Corner in Dorchester. He has a rough-edged passion for food sustainability and is figuring out how to live life with his neighbors who worship at and live near the Quincy Street Missional Church. He works as the Fair Trade Campaign intern at the Boston Faith and Justice Network and as a part-times sales associate at Ten Thousand Villages in Brookline.